Paola De Santo, "The Ambassador and the Courtesan: Political Bodies in Renaissance Italy" (U Delaware Press, 2026)

About this episode

Paola De Santo discusses her book on the roles of ambassadors and courtesans in Renaissance Italy and their impact on modern subjectivity and state formation.

Paola de Santo joins Jana Byars to talk about her new book, The Ambassador and the Courtesan: Political Bodies in Renaissance Italy (U Delaware Press, 2026). Drawing on literature, legal texts, and archival materials, The Ambassador and the Courtesan offers a comparative analysis of these two emerging roles in the early modern period and in Renaissance Italian society. While these two figures may appear unrelated, this book demonstrates their shared relation to the body politic, including the relationship of their very bodies to that metaphorical body. One imagines the early modern ambassador as traveling from one center of power to another, gathering news and disseminating it in writing, as well as negotiating in person. The courtesan, in contrast, is normally imagined employing her body in the service of entertaining elite clients in the enclosed space of the urban salon. These characterizations reinforce their very different roles in Renaissance Italian society and culture, but by placing them in dialogue, salient points of convergence emerge detailing how they were integral to the concurrent emergence of a modern subjectivity of the individual and the formation of the modern…

People in this episode

Host: Jana Byars

Guest: Paola De Santo

Topics covered

• Renaissance Italy
• political bodies
• courtesans
• ambassadors
• modern subjectivity
• state formation

Keywords

• Renaissance
• Italy
• ambassador
• courtesan
• political bodies
• modern state
• subjectivity

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: U Delaware Press

Books & works: The Ambassador and the Courtesan: Political Bodies in Renaissance Italy

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